Darkstar

Tracking candidate via social network exposure

Techpresident is a great new site tracking presidential candidates and their influence online, particularly via social network. You can see stats on the number of Myspace friends, new items, spending on keywords, etc. Check it.

Technorati Tags: netvocate

Online Activism

Online Activism: "

Pew: 14 Million Online Political Activists in U.S. Today | Personal Democracy Forum.

23% of campaign internet users has either posted their own political commentary to the web via a blog, site or newsgroup (8%); forwarded or posted someone else's commentary (13%); created political audio or video (1%); forwarded someone else's audio or video (8%). 'That translates into about 14 million people who were using the 'read-write Web' to contribute to political discussion and activity,' the study's authors Lee Rainie and John Horrigan write.

* The most common use of the net is to find out candidate positions on issues or voting records, followed by efforts to check the accuracy of claims made by them or about them.

Imagine a political candidate in 2008 using Chipin (Netvocate) to publish and share his/her positions via video/audio. That could be updated depending on the site the widget is located or the viewer....

Jamie Raskin tells Congress to stick it!

Jamie and I worked together on the VotePair campaign a couple of years ago and I have always admired his intellect and whit, but this quote from him absolutely has me in awe of him now.. On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify. At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?" Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible." The room erupted into applause.

Algae instead of oil?

Jamais Cascio over at WorldChanging notes some interesting developments in biomass chemistry that may have the potential to help us transition to an oil-free economy.

So what's the biomass-based alternative to using petroleum for fertilizer?

Algae.

Engineer-Poet at the Ergosphere breaks it down. Algae can be used to produce hydrogen, and hydrogen can be used to "fix" nitrogen. With the hydrogen production operating a mere 1% efficiency, a hectare of hydrogen-generating algae could produce the nitrate to fertilize around 20 hectares of agricultural production. That same hectare could fertilize 200 hectares if H2 generation efficiency is brought up to the 10% thought possible.

The Long Emergency

What are we going to do when there's no more cheap gas to guzzle?RollingStone.com: The Long Emergency by Kunstler paints a dire picture. I posted this on my mailing list a couple months ago, but don't think I threw it up on the blog. Enjoy the read and walk next time you want to jump in the car.

Cost of War

Cost of War website shows how much we are spending as a nation and also how much your state and county is spending as a whole.  The sad part is if you compare it to the cost of schools, health, housing, etc.

Track your representatives in Congress

Plogress.com is a new site that provides current information on what our representatives are doing in U.S. Congress.

Choose your state, representative (zip code lookup available if you don’t know your rep) or senator and view a weblog of that person’s activity or subscribe to the RSS feed in your newsreader. Here’s the Plogress report for Senator Hillary Clinton.  Great use of the web to track elected officials.

Who are you?

Well, that's easy to find out now on a new service called zabasearch. Not sure how large the Identity theft market is, but I know it is growing. Zabasearch willl help out this crowd. Here is an interview with the founders - http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67407,00.html. They hate it, but think if they don't do it someone else will. We should all get our free credit report at https://www.annualcreditreport.com/. It would be awesome if this service was free monthly. That would help limit some fraud from going on too long.

thanks Olin for the info

The Onion | Latest Bin Laden Videotape Wishes America 'A Crappy Valentine's Day'

Link: The Onion | Latest Bin Laden Videotape Wishes America 'A Crappy Valentine's Day'.

WASHINGTON, DC—A new videotape of Osama bin Laden broadcast on the Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera Monday beseeched Allah to grant all Americans a "crappy Valentine's Day."

The Tsunami Tsunami: The Charitable and Political Response to the Disaster

Link: NPQ - Winter 2004 Issue - The Tsunami Tsunami: The Charitable and Political Response to the Disaster. This is a great article looking at the dynamics between charities and governmental response to disasters.